Demonspawn

© 2001 Lee Garrett
All rights reserved.

Yeh-Feng paused below the ridge, in the teeth of the wind, focusing through the bitter cold. He knew discomfort was only a ghost in the brain—an electric phantom to be dismissed with casual indifference. His obsidian eyes pierced the darkness, seeking dangerous shadows in the mist.

There they were! Five men approaching, lighting thir way with orange torches that bobbed along his back trail through the marsh. The frogs grew silent and the crickets grew still. With a sigh, borrowed from the wind, he turned around, and continued on. A wraith in the mist, his feet barely seemed to touch the ground.

He was confident of making good time, now that he was at the end of the marsh. He climbed a bank and passed through a screen of willows. A few minutes later, he found himself veering around a spur of rock and stumbling into a sheltering draw.

It was a good place for an ambush. He could turn the table on the bandits who stalked him. His spirit resisted the idea. Fresh from the emperor's killing fields, he had thrown his sword away, forsaking bloodshed. The fluttering red ribbon tied to his right wrist was a reminder of the sacred oaths he'd taken.

He carried no weapon, but he was warrior-trained. With or without a sword, killing had always come far too easily. He lifted his eyes to the evening sky. In the fading light of the sun, dragons danced between strips of cloud. Their play lifted his heart. He pushed on, determined to avoid the robbers. There was enough blood on his soul. Executioner was not a role he wanted to continue.

Hemmed in by rough earth walls, he began to climb, testing each tuft of grass, each tangled root, as he went. The autumn cold was on his side. If he were lucky, it would encourage them to return to the warmth of their homes.

He pulled himself over the high lip of the next ridge and found his climbing was over. The land continued on, stretching away into mist-lightened darkness. He hurried past a grove of trees keeping lonely vigil and discovered a huge stone lantern, cold and unlit. It guarded a snaking path lined with smooth round stones.

On a nearby tree, prayers were brushed onto paper strips and tied to the branches. The wind prodded one loose. It flew past his face and his hand caught it reflexively. He opened the paper, reading the characters brushed there. A prickle of dread worked down his spine. It was a prayer for a sudden death; an ill omen.

Another slip of paper tore free, then another, then many more. Possessing a life of their own, they darting at his face, flying past like pellets of snow. They returned, moving against the wind. This is a cursed and haunted land, he thought. He warded the prayer strips off with his ribboned hand, angling his body out of their way with an economy of motion that had taken years to master.

Yeh-Feng darted down the path, wondering how far he'd have to travel to find a place of rest. His feet drummed on the stones. A bamboo forest wrapped around him. Time became disjointed. The moon hid behind thickening clouds, making it harder to judge the passage of night.

He was into his second wind when he found a three-sided shelter with a peaked roof. A shrine of some kind, he decided.

Under the roof, on a raised platform, was a statue of a twisted dwarfish figure with a monkey's face and many extra arms. It was seated cross-legged. The eyes were closed in meditation. One hand held a lotus. Another hand held a carved ivory fan. A third hand held a large pearl, the symbol of enlightenment, while the last hand was cupped and extended.

The warrior smiled. Are you giving or taking? he wondered. He drew closer, and the clouds parted a moment to splash pale moonlight over the shrine. The illumination made the stone path glow. Enough reflected light reached the seated figure to alter the cast of its face. The eyes seemed open now. The dwarf seemed to be returning Yeh-Feng's smile, adding a bit of mockery to it, a bit of mute questioning.

The warrior found his hand at his side, feeling for the sword he no longer wore. His hand moved on. He fumbled with the pouch inside his sash. It was heavy with coins. He drew a few of them out and placed them in the empty palm. A bolt of fear jagged through him, and he leaped back. The stone hand moved, closing upon the coins, claiming them irrevocably.

Yeh-Feng faded back from the shrine, never taking his eyes from it until distance and the night fog swallowed it whole. The path dimmed around him. The moon slid back into a veil of cloud. For a brief time, it seemed as if he'd passed into some strange other world. He just hoped that now he was truly back.

The trees thinned. The path ended at a clearing cluttered with ancient rusted armor, abandoned broadswords, and spears. The relics appeared to float in a black sea, half buried in the rich loam. He hesitated to enter the old battlefield. His warrior's instincts warned him that something wasn't right. The soil had an odd glossiness to it. It seemed to move in small, subtle ways.

He knelt and studied it closer through the ground mist. His breath caught in his throat. His pulse increased. His eyes widened. He wasn't looking at ground. It was a carpet of black-shelled beetles, centipedes, earth worms, scorpions, and things he had no name for.

He turned to retrace his steps, only to find that the path had left him stranded, withdrawing while he'd looked away. He muttered a warrior's curse. There was no choice now. He'd have to cross the battlefield. He didn't trust his feet to the glossy black insects.

He studied the alignment of forsaken armor and nerved himself to action. He clenched his teeth and leaped. Landing cat-like on a battered chest plate, he bound away to the next piece. He hit it squarely, but it slid under him as he landed. His arms flailed as he fought for balance. He managed to jump again to a round shield and stay upright on it as it skimmed along. The shield carried him off his plotted course with no way to continue. The next closest piece of armor large enough to land on was just out of range.

The insect sea grew choppy. The glossy black creatures sensed his presence. They began to wiggle and squirm over the edge of the shield, creeping closer. Hungry, they made scraping and chittering sounds. He would have considered the insects a minor threat ordinarily, but he noticed that much of the armor adrift in the living sea was corroded. He didn't want to find out what the insects' secretions would do to human flesh.

He loosened the bindings on his open-faced, tear-shaped helmet and removed it. Holding it by the ornamental dragon horns, keeping its top pointed at his heart, he leaned out and started to fall down. Yeh-feng shoved off hard with his feet, aiming for another chest plate.

He fell short, as he knew he would. The helmet went bottom-first into the chitinous swarm. Inverted in a handstand, his feet were together, suspended high above his head. This next part would be difficult. He bent his elbow to generate spring as he kicked down with his heels, bending his knees.

The result sent him spinning upright, giving him the last few feet he needed to land on the half-buried remnant of a dead armored horse. Its face a silently laughing skull, it regarded his passing with mirth. One more jump, he decided, and he'd be clear of this deathtrap.

About to vault, he checked himself. The sea of insects was becoming agitated. It bubbled and churned. A mound of glistening bodies heaved up, whirling like a waterspout. Jets of black shot upward. They stiffened, forming serpentine coils that twitched. Their ends curled, grasping blindly. A large bole rose from the insect sea. Planted in its center was a single soulless eyes, blazing with insane hunger.

He spat. It was a demon from some nameless hell.

"Still glad you set aside your sword?"

He shifted, keeping the demon in sight, wanting to see who was speaking. A small cloaked figure with a blue monkey face had joined him. It was the figure from the shrine.

"What do you want?" Yeh-Feng snarled. "I'm busy right now."

"Take any of the items I hold. One of them has power to vanquish the hell-beast."

"I'm no sorcerer. I have no schooling in the use of such things. I wouldn't even know which object to choose."

"Ask for something else, then. I will give it to you. How about your abandoned sword? Does your hand not itch for it? I could fetch it in a moment..."

"No. I set it aside with many vows to heaven."

"Are your vows worth more than your life? The demon is pulling up its roots. It will start this way in another minute."

Yeh-Feng considered the objects that the dwarf carried; fan, pearl, lotus, and coin. The fan was a symbol of refinement, shielding beauty, guarded virtue. The pearl was the dragon's treasure, a symbol of enlightenment. Enlightenment—it would only tell him that he was a dead man. The lotus was a symbol of the power of dreams. If this only were a dream, he thought. Then there was the coin. Should he take it back because his offering had done him no good? He shook his head. No! He might die, but it would not be while lacking in charity.

"The fan," he said, watching the demon slosh through bug-soup, wading closer.

"Are you sure?" the monkey-faced dwarf asked.

"Yes!"

"Here." The dwarf handed it over, grinning. "The gods approve. You've not disappointed me."

"How comforting," Yeh-Feng muttered, opening the fan with a snap of his wrist. It was old, ribbed with dragon bone. Open, it revealed a hidden edge of interlocked steel segments forming a crescent cutting edge.

The warrior leaped into the writhing limbs of the demon. He caught one pliant tentacle and swung through a short arc. Letting go, he dropped on top of an armored corpse. His speed was too great to stop. Fortunately, he was in range of other debris. He pounced onto another round shield, lost his footing, and pitched head-first into the glossy black roils of insects.

His hands sank into the living muck, splattering it. He thought the unnatural vermin would sting and bite him, stripping his bones while he screamed, but a strange thing happened. The black sea recoiled hastily, especially from the fan in his hand. It seemed to have a protective virtue, which was ironic because it was designed to protect virtue.

Yeh-Feng scrambled to his feet as demon coils caught up to him. They wrapped around his torso with crushing force, lifting him off his feet. "Yaaagh!" he screamed, as the air was forced from his body. One arm was pinned to his torso, but the one holding the fan was free. He fanned the air, slicing with the cutting edge. It's not as if I were killing anything human, he thought, using the fan to cut through the tentacles, severing them from the demon construct.

As the pieces fell, they fragmented into milling insects once more. Yeh-Feng continued to slash until he was free. His feet hit the ground, the way clearing before him as he waved the fan. He hurried as fast as he could, keeping the fan in play to ward off new demon limbs and to open a path.

The demon screeched in fury but let him leave the battlefield. He ran until the site was far behind him, finally crashing to a stop with his back to enormous stalks of bamboo. He gulped air, easing his laboring lungs and heart. Remembering the fan, he closed it and slipped it into his sash where his sword had once been. The fan felt right, riding at his side.

For the moment, it was enough to just be alive.

"May the gods lose interest in me," he prayed.

A monkey laughed in the distance, in the trees. He looked at the ribbon on his own wrist, sighed, and forced himself on, suspecting that obscurity was too much to hope for.

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